Steven Brust - Iorich

“Would they do that?”

“They might.”

“It wouldn’t work any­way. The Em­pire would find some­one else just as good, and make sure it doesn’t hap­pen again, and hunt down who­ev­er did it.”

“I sup­pose so. In any case, I apol­ogize; I un­der­stand this is out­side of your usu­al line of work.”

He shrugged and a wisp of a smile came and went. “It’s a wel­come break from think­ing about rules of ev­idence and forms of ar­gu­ment.”

“Oh? You don’t en­joy your work?”

“I do, re­al­ly. But it gets te­dious at times. This whole case has been a bit out of the or­di­nary for me, and I ap­pre­ci­ate that.”

“A plea­sure to be of ser­vice,” I said. “I can’t imag­ine do­ing what you do.”

“I can’t—that is—nev­er mind.”

“Do you care whether the per­son you’re de­fend­ing is ac­tu­al­ly in­no­cent or guilty?”

“In­no­cent and guilty are le­gal terms.”

“You’re evad­ing the ques­tion.”

“You should be an Iorich.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“The House has de­creed that, what­ev­er a per­son may or may not have done, he is en­ti­tled to be de­fend­ed. That is suf­fi­cient for me.”

“But if he tells you he did, doesn’t that—”

“No one would tell me that, be­cause I’d have to tes­ti­fy to that fact.”

“Oh, right, I knew that. But if, say, the per­son im­plies it, or hints at it—”

“I still give him the best de­fense I can, be­cause that’s what the House dic­tates, and what Im­pe­ri­al law de­crees as well.”

“And you feel good about that?”

He looked puz­zled for a minute. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Huh? Me? I’d feel bet­ter about it if the poor bas­tard was guilty. But I’m not an Iorich.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“It feels good if a guy walks away, then?”

“What are you get­ting at?”

“Noth­ing, re­al­ly. I’m mak­ing con­ver­sa­tion and let­ting the back of my head work on this prob­lem.”

“Oh.” He gave me an odd look, then said, “It feels good to make the best ar­gu­ments I can, and it feels good when, some­times, it ac­tu­al­ly has some­thing to do with jus­tice.”

“Jus­tice? What’s that?”

“Se­ri­ous ques­tion?”

“No, but an­swer it as if it were.”

“I don’t know. I don’t get in­to the deep­er, mys­ti­cal as­pects. Some do. But jus­tice? Edicts oc­ca­sion­al­ly have some­thing to do with jus­tice, but statutes al­most nev­er do.”

“Uh, what do they have to do with?”

“Prac­ti­cal­ity. For ex­am­ple, right here in Adri­lankha, when meat­pack­ing be­came such a big in­dus­try, they passed lo­cal statutes say­ing that any peas­ant who fell short for the year could be kicked off his land. The no­bles raised an out­cry, but didn’t have the clout to do any­thing about it.”

“I don’t un­der­stand what that has to do with meat­pack­ing.”

“Kick peas­ants off the land, there’s your la­bor force for the pack­ing plants. Along with a lot of East­ern­ers, of course.”

“Oh. Are they that, I don’t know, ob­vi­ous about it?”

“Some­times. In the area around Lake Shalo­mar—right where Tir­ma is—they dis­cov­ered sil­ver. First thing that hap­pened was an in­flux of min­ers, the sec­ond thing was an in­flux of mer­chants sell­ing to the mi­nors. So the Duke passed a statute tax­ing both the sale and the pur­chase of min­ing equip­ment, set tax­es to some ab­surd lev­el, and pro­vid­ed for the con­scrip­tion of any­one un­able to pay the tax. That’s how he re­cruit­ed his army. I don’t think you’d call that jus­tice.”

“Um. No, I imag­ine not.”

“There are worse cas­es. Around the Ko­rlaph, north of the Push­ta, they dis­cov­ered tin, and had a re­al la­bor short­age. The Count went on a statute ram­page, and by the time he was done, he not on­ly owned all the mines, but had made up the most ab­surd laws to have a few thou­sand lo­cals ar­rest­ed, and then sen­tenced them to work the mines.”

“He can do that?”

“Once in a while, some­one has enough fam­ily with enough mon­ey to bring a par­tic­ular case to the at­ten­tion of the Em­pire, and a par­tic­ular law gets over­turned.”

“And I thought the Jhereg was cor­rupt.”

“Law is a re­flec­tion of so­ci­ety, jus­tice is a re­flec­tion of an ide­al­iza­tion of that so­ci­ety.”

“You’re quot­ing some­one.”

He nod­ded. “Yurstov, Iorich Em­per­or of the Fifth Cy­cle, who tried to cre­ate an ac­tu­al jus­tice sys­tem. He failed, but he did some good.”

“And you stay with Edicts be­cause they aren’t as bad?”

He frowned. “I guess that’s part of it, though I don’t think of it in those terms. I had a client once who an­noyed some­one, and the some­one set him up to look like he’d com­mit­ted a crime. I got him off. That felt like jus­tice.”

“Was it? I mean, what had he done to an­noy the guy?”

Perisil shrugged. “I don’t know. As I said, the deep­er lev­els I leave to oth­ers. But that’s jus­tice to me. Sup­pose some poor fool of a Teck­la steals a chick­en from his land­lord be­cause he’s hun­gry. And some high-​and-​mighty Or­ca man­ages a scheme to cheat his crew out of half their pay. If the first guy gets off with a cou­ple of cuts, and the sec­ond goes to the Star, well, to me that’s jus­tice.”

“How of­ten does that hap­pen?”

“I don’t know; I don’t deal with those sorts of cas­es. Those have to do with tra­di­tion­al law, and I work with Edicts. More of­ten it’s the oth­er way around, I should think. Is there a point to all this, Lord Tal­tos?”

“I’m a cu­ri­ous guy, is all. And you’re—odd.”

“You’ve met ad­vo­cates be­fore.”

“Yes, but on­ly the ones in­ter­est­ed in mon­ey.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes, I sup­pose so.”

I stood up. “Sor­ry, I’ll let you work.”

“And you?”

“I need to think like a Jhereg.”

“I imag­ine that comes eas­ier to you than think­ing like an ad­vo­cate.”

“A lit­tle,” I said. “Oh, one oth­er thing. De­saniek. Where do I find her?”

His eyes nar­rowed. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m not sure. But I have no in­ten­tion of killing her.”

“If you even talk to her—”

“I doubt it will come to that.”

He hes­itat­ed, then said, “While she’s con­duct­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, she’ll be work­ing out of the Of­fice of the Im­pe­ri­al Jus­ticer in the Im­pe­ri­al Wing.”

“What does she look like?”

He frowned again. He clear­ly didn’t like the way this con­ver­sa­tion was go­ing.

“Re­al­ly,” I said. “I don’t in­tend to kill her. Or beat her. I don’t know what I’m go­ing to do, but it could end up that I’ll be sav­ing her life, de­pend­ing on how things shake out.”

“All right,” he said. “But I’m not very good at de­scrib­ing peo­ple.”

“What’s the first thing you no­tice about her?”

“Um. Her face?”

“Any­thing spe­cial about how she dress­es, or what she wears—”

“She keeps her hair up, and she al­ways wears a stick­pin in it with a lot of lit­tle di­amonds.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That should do it. And don’t wor­ry about it too much.”

I took my­self out of the of­fice and back up to the main floor of the House. I need­ed to think, and I need­ed to find a place to do it. I crossed over to the Iorich Wing, stared for a mo­ment at the sculpt­ed thing and won­dered what it sym­bol­ized, then end­ed up let­ting my feet car­ry me to­ward the pris­ons while I tried to put the pieces to­geth­er.